playing it back
by kelle olwyler

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Muriel Rukeyser

Deborah Scott isn’t a big woman in size, but she makes up for it in impact. Not the hard-hitting, in-your-face, never-know-what-hit you impact. Rather, hers is a soft, enticing and inviting kind of imprint that you’re glad she left behind. An Asheville resident for 9 years, she’s woven her magic for her adopted community through her passionate artistic directorship of the Asheville Playback Theater (APT).

Founded in New York State by Jonathan Fox in 1975, Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which members of the audience tell stories from their lives and see them immediately enacted or played back on the stage by a trained acting troupe. There’s magic in it from how it involves everyone in the room, either through sharing a personal story, enacting the story, or witnessing the story. And Playback Theater happens all over the world, in many languages, in many cultures.

Deborah believes that Playback Theater’s unique contribution to the world is its ability to create a moment for an individual or a group in which pure validation, healing an connection can occur. “It can be transformative,” says Deborah, “because a person is listened to about something deeply personal, sometimes for the very first time.” That moment may be fun, exciting, troubling, or confusing, but it is always personal. She recalls a performance in which a man recounted a story from his tour of duty in Vietnam many years earlier. It was a harrowing story, with ambush, death and pain. The troupe did its best to reflect back the story. After the scene was over, the man said to them, “I don’t feel I’ve ever been heard . . . until now.”

When Deborah arrived in Asheville from New York, she was moving to be closer to family. Trained as an actor, she worked as a set designer and ran a theatrical properties business—Scott’s Props.

She was ready to give up theater, and she thought Asheville was the kind of place that wouldn’t support much theater anyway, so the timing was right. A month after her arrival, a friend of a friend started a very small Playback group just to see what could happen. Upon hearing her background, they worked on her hard to get her to come to rehearsals “for just six weeks, then we won’t bug you anymore.” They rehearsed with each other’s stories (and still do). It wasn’t until the sixth week that they had their first live performance with a “friendly” audience six weeks later. It was an eye-opener. “It was a completely different experience from what I was used to in New York. The interacting with the audience was astonishing to me, and I had to learn more about that. So, I reenlisted for another few months of rehearsals.” And it stuck . . . but good.

Raphael Peter and Cat Gilliam founded Asheville Playback Theater in Asheville in 1995. After one year, Cat left for other pastures, and Deborah was drafted as Playback Theater’s artistic director. “We had many wonderful players from diverse backgrounds,” remembers Deborah. “I also wanted it to be “good theater.” And over time, the company has discovered the more interesting an artistic choice an actor makes the more helpful the enactment is to the storyteller and it is better theater. The Company is twelve members strong, ranging in age from 17 to 75, with diverse life experiences, backgrounds and professions. Now in its ninth season, the company has performed at festivals, conferences, schools, senior centers, prisons and shelters. APT has been awarded three NC Arts Council Grassroots Grants, several foundation grants, and taught in schools, summer programs and privately. And they’ve done some memorable work with several local communities, and have plans for more.

APT is always looking for new venues. “Part of our mission,” explains Deborah, “is to go where the stories are not really invited or told.” With that in mind, they offered their services to a women’s minimum-security prison in Black Mountain, the last step before these women went out on their own. They did performances in the dining hall every couple of months. “It always smelled like chicken during our shows,” she recalls.

Women who came, came by choice. “There are very big issues alive for some of these women. They are dealing with the question ‘what happens when I’m out?’ and all the associated ramifications.” Deborah recalls that many of the women had been in abusive situations, and were going back out in a world that could be just as threatening as when they had first gone to prison. “One woman told us she was taken out of the prison to go for a meal in a restaurant. She looked at the menu and burst into tears. She hadn’t had the opportunity for choice for so long, she no longer knew how to make one.” When an inmate said something like that, there were a whole lot of heads nodding; something had been articulated that was an issue for the whole group.

Deborah wanted to make sure these women knew that “anyone can do this, you know what each other have been through better than we, the actors, could, and you can do justice to your stories better than we can.” After performing for the women, company members returned to teach them the basic playback forms. And as a result of the classes, they saw the inmates do heartbreaking, incredible work in service of each other’s stories.

APT performed at Craggy Men’s Prison in Weaverville for several years. Soon, they will be at two men’s prisons in Spruce Pine. They did a demo in one of the prisons at the end of the last season, and the prisoners who attended were on fire. APT will soon be teaching there and performing.

Deborah considers Playback Theater a feminine form of theater because it is not top-down, and is very cooperative. Every actor’s job is to make every other actor on stage right. “With improv, you have to be able to initiate something, to lead, and be equally willing to follow.” It’s an awareness each actor must develop,” says Deborah. “The audience watching should not be able to pick out a leader or follower, they are so in sync.”

Deborah has great respect for the Playback Theater venue.

“Being allowed to reflect back the story is an honor, and we do it with respect, appreciation and gratitude that our storytellers are willing to share something from their lives and trust us with the gift. Their individual stories serve to connect us with each other, and with our essential shared humanity.”

There are other activities beginning and planned for the future. A new teen troupe for ages 13 to 18 is being auditioned currently, and will begin rehearsals soon. Any children interested should contact Raphael Peter, APT's co-director at the number at the end of this article. There is a great deal of interest in starting a troupe for the Spanish-speaking community, where theater has traditionally been a vehicle for communicating important personal, community and political information.

If you haven’t been yet, it’s worth the occasion of being part of an audience drawn together by their very common human experience.

APT has changed its current performance agenda from previous years. They no longer perform every third Friday, nor are they at any one location for an entire season.
The next performance will be at NC Stage Company on December 19th at 8 P.M. For other performance dates and locations, contact Deborah Scott at 828-274-8315. For questions about the company’s availability for performances or about the teen troupe, call Raphael Peter at 828-274-7223. More information about APT can be found at spiritinthesmokies.com/playback.

Kelle Olwyler, a management consultant based in Asheville, helps companies identify their meaningful stories and apply them to developing the heart and soul of the company. She is an author and columnist and an avid collector of human stories that deeply effect the human heart.
[ Kel Bergan Consulting; 828-254-8049; kelbergan.com ]